The present invention relates generally to the packaging of electronic components. More specifically, the invention relates to chip carriers and methods of forming such carriers.
There are a wide variety of integrated circuit packaging techniques that are commonly used in the semiconductor industry. One common packaging approach contemplates mounting one or more integrated circuits on a structure referred to as a chip carrier having interconnect routing thereon that facilitates electrically connecting the integrated circuit to external devices. One common type of chip carrier is a BGA substrate, which typically takes the form of a dielectric substrate having metal wiring printed on opposing surfaces and conductive vias that extend through the substrate to electrically connect the printed wiring layers. Other common types of chip carrier include silicon interposers, lead frames and flexible carriers.
Although existing chip carriers work well in a wide variety of applications, a drawback of most chip carriers is that they can be relatively expensive to produce. Therefore, there on ongoing efforts to provide even more cost effective chip carriers that can be used in semiconductor packaging applications.